


Maiden's Head

by Missy



Category: Princess Bride (1987)
Genre: And the avoidance thereof, Aphrodisiacs, Cleverness, F/M, Humor, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 12:15:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/913101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buttercup’s resourcefulness is all that stands between her and premarital ravaging; fortunately, she didn’t spend years on a Floran farm for nothing...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maiden's Head

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Ladies Bingo, Prompt: Aphrodisiac

Today, Prince Humperdinck informed his incipient bride Buttercup, would be a banner day in the royal castle of Florin – today would be the day he finally managed to make use of the utterly useless. 

“Today,” he declared quite formally, “I am filing my intent to woo you within the proper bounds of Florin Royal behavior.” He grinned. “Are you not thrilled, my angel?”

Buttercup turned her withering gaze upon him, her eyes. “Of course.” Her tone held not an iota of joy.

Humperdinck winced. Since she’d learned of the death of her true beloved, Buttercup wasn’t fun to have around the castle anymore. She moped without strumming her harp, drifted about the hall aimlessly, and could often be heard sighing ‘why’ beneath her breath. It was enough to give a man a complex.

That was why he’d came up with the brilliant idea to seduce her.

“Tush, my sweet.” He bowed. “I shall leave you to dream of me. Only me,” he added firmly, then took her hand between both of his and pressed his lips to her sweetly perfumed flesh.

Buttercup waited for his firm retreat, and once she knew she was out of his sight she rubbed her hand furiously against her skirt. Then she sat down to formulate a plan. 

She had, of course, been privy to his private business; it was hard not to be, in a castle filled with gossips such as this. And so she learned that he had planned to seduce her and relieve her of her virginity before their wedding night, for nefarious war-related purposes.

“Why not?” he asked Rugen rhetorically during their morning beer, which Buttercup had been barred from taking beside him but could well listen to his grousings by stuffing herself between the wall and a heavy tapestry. “There’s no need to send her to her certain grave without having known the pleasure of a man’s touch.” He propped his bow upon his shoulder and stuck an apple in his mouth. “I’ll woo her with my body, and then marry her the month after our bedding. It will be a shame to sacrifice her to Guilder,” he sighed, “but she’ll be well remembered as my beautiful, ripe, luscious little bride.”

Rugen wished him good luck by offering him an array of aphrodisiacs, lubricants and manuals, but Humperdinc arrogantly refused them all. A prince such as he had no need for help.

But a princess, ahh – she required much, much more to ensure her own safety.

*** 

He started with a soft peddle. Wine, fine meals, gifts of ermine capes and precious jewels, of strong horses, and a beautiful portrait were presented in rapid suit to Buttercup. But she remained an elusive wraith; his sumptuous meals went back to the kitchen untouched, and the musicians he hired were sent back unpaid. The pets he sent along seemed to absorb the melancholy, and sat by her feet with sad, wet eyes, allowing her to pet them awkwardly while she stared silently out the window. She chose to wear her simple housedresses, rendering her need for the ermine capes absolutely nill, and the jewels were sold for alms to feed the poor.

He tried poetry, songs of love – she accepted them all with bland and simple thanks. No swooning – no display of grand passion. In desperation, Humperdinck turned to the arsenal of aphrodisiacs Rugen had provided him with, but found them disposed and gone – Buttercup announced that she’d thought them poisons sent by Guilder, and had them destroyed. He had the kitchen servant who did so whipped and then headed off to the livery to gain knowledge from his soldiers.

While Buttercup marshaled her resources, he bent the ear of every soldier under his employ. There were, it was said and whispered among many of the court’s noblemen, many ways to woo a woman of the lowland counties from which Buttercup came, and Prince Humperdinck was determined to learn them all in prideful secret, for one such as he could never admit to his own lack of expertise in the female form. 

Buttercup knew where he would head next –to the village, to search out someone willing to give him help. Searching the village for a savior, he would finally stumble upon a gnarled old man in a robe, who would hand him several tubs of sweet mint and angelswort, among other properties with little to no actual aphrodisiac properties. He would gladly take it all, hording the stuff in the castle kitchen, and then he would pay the cooks to ply Buttercup with varian root and rhinoceros horn and weed of maiden and a thousand other sorts of aphrodisiacs. But never would her icy exterior soften. 

After a month of this treatment, and with the wedding approaching rapidly, he declared his defeat.

“You have won, dulcet,” he declared. “You shall come to your wedded bed…intact.” He shuddered, leaving her be at last.

Buttercup was wise enough to know it wasn’t over – no, not by a long shot. He would not give in to his baser urges now.

There would be time enough for that during the wedding night.

*** 

“So, did they work?”

“Very well.”

Buttercup stood, cloaked, at the castle’s kitchen entrance. Quietly, she handed the two strangers each a small bag of golden coins. “I wish there were a better way to repay your kindness,” she confessed.

“Your health is enough,” said the hunched, gnarled man, tucking the bag of coins to his belt look. “Just keep your chin up, all right? Have a little rib roast tonight, some creamed turnips…”

The person beside him – equally gnarled and bowed – tugged upon his shoulder. “Cut it out! Time to get back home.”

“Eh, always with the poking.” Briefly, he pivoted back toward the door. “Good luck, Princess.”

The two figures, leaning on their wheelbarrow, strolled off together. “Wasn’t that nice, Max? Now you know why that fella kept going on about her being his true love!”

“True love schmoo love,” replied Miracle Max. “I’ve got a miracle boiling on the hearth and if we don’t shake a tailfeather I’ll have to start from scratch. Y’know how tough whipping up extract of joy from scratch? I’ll have to squeeze another orphan!”

“Hah! You’re squeezin’ nothing till you feed those two nice boys. THEN you can get to work making a miracle for him!”

And on he went, into the golden afternoon, well aware that their princess was, at last, safe.

For now.

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction uses characters from **The Princess Bride** , all of whom are the property of **William Goldman**. No money was gained from the writing of this fanfiction and all are used under the strictures of of the Berne Convention.


End file.
